Yule
by positivelymeteoric
Summary: Hermione's night at the Yule Ball is not quite what she hoped.


**Please please (pretty please?) review! And if anyone has any requests for a one-shot or even something a few chapters long, I'd be happy to take them!**

**Enjoy!**

She should've seen that tonight would be a disaster back when the awful, dreadful, hideous thing had been announced all those weeks ago.

Yet, stupidly of her, she had thought that maybe things could be different, starting tonight. It would be a fresh start, a turning point. Instead, it seemed that it had made everything worse.

She pulled the pins out of her hair and it tumbled down her shoulders, slowly changing from smooth locks achievable only by using copious amounts of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion to its usual brown nimbus.

In the wardrobe behind her hung her dress, the periwinkle fabric along the bottom torn and muddy from where that idiot had placed his filthy shoe when he had stormed off after the argument.

Really, if it was anyone was to blame for the ruined night, it was him. It had been Ron's fault from the start.

When they had first learned about the Yule Ball, she'd felt a nervous little twist in her stomach, her mind reeling with all sorts of awful possibilities. What if no one asked her? What if she had to show up alone? What if-

Well.

What if he asked someone else?

Because that was the thing that angered her most about him. It wasn't the fact that he was obnoxious and stubborn, or that he seemed to go out of his way sometimes to pick a fight with her.

No, what made her angry was the fact that she cared, really truly cared. Not in the way that she cared for Harry, who really was practically her brother, but in a different way, a way that scared her because it meant that for once, she didn't have all the answers.

He didn't ask anyone else, but he certainly didn't ask her. Instead, it seemed as if Ron was pretending that the Yule Ball would never come.

She gave up on waiting for him, and said yes to Viktor's invitation, trying to smile when he asked and pretend that the boy asking her had red hair instead of dark brown.

Christmas Day had come faster than she'd thought it would, and she'd spent the afternoon getting ready in a crowded bathroom filled with the noise of other girls as they swapped makeup and gossip.

She had gagged and sputtered upon smelling the purple potion inside the bottle. It seemed that Sleekeazy's had perfected the scent of burnt rubber and the bottom of a cauldron. But it was worth it, in a way, when she had looked into the mirror to see a girl with smooth, flowing hair.

And it seemed, at least for the first hour, like the night would be as close to perfect as it could get. She'd managed to get through the first dance with Viktor without tripping or making a fool of herself, and he didn't step on her feet once. He'd gotten her drinks when she was thirsty without her even needing to ask and had told her stories about winters at Durmstrang and listened to her talk about SPEW without once making a rude comment, unlike certain people.

_Maybe_, she had mused as he attempted to pronounce her name, _Viktor was the right choice for tonight_.

But then, of course, everything had to fall apart.

Ron had accused her of "fraternizing with the enemy", which was ridiculous, really, seeing as this was a competition between schools, not the front lines of a war. After that, she'd lost track of Viktor and had spent twenty minutes searching for him around the Great Hall, feeling utterly foolish.

The worst, though, came after the ball itself, when she'd left Harry and Ron behind. She was nearly shaking with anger as she walked up the stairs, and it was all she could do not to storm up to Gryffindor Tower and cast _Incendio_ on all of Ron's silly Chudley Cannons posters.

On the steps behind her, she heard his familiar shuffling, and forced herself not to turn around. But of course, with her awful luck, it was at that moment that she tripped, landing sprawled on the cold marble. One of her shoes had flown off and it felt as though her ankle was twisted.

She lay there on the ground, listening as the _clomp_ of his footsteps drew closer.

She lifted only her head up to find him standing over her, her shoe dangling from his fingers by the strap.

"This is- er, this is yours." He put the shoe down beside her and then offered her a hand up.

And really, all she wanted was to take that hand (and to keep holding onto it even after she had gotten up, though she felt embarrassed just to think that) and take Ron's unspoken apology and pretend that tonight had never happened and that everything was okay between them.

But she couldn't, of course. She was too stubborn, too proud to make things easy for either of them.

So instead, she had pushed herself up, even though her head spun from crashing against the marble, and taken her shoe. She gave him the coldest look she could muster, and then hobbled away far less gracefully than she had hoped.

Something in his face changed in the split second that she saw it before she had turned away. The sheepish hopefulness had frozen into hurt, then anger.

"Fine!" he had shouted after her as she took cautious steps on her shaky, painful feet. "Go back to Vicky! See what I care!"

She was fairly certain that that was the point where she had started crying.

They'd argued again in the common room, only to be interrupted by Harry, who'd simply stood there, looking dumbstruck and slightly frightened, while he watched as they screamed and their faces turned unappealing shades of red.

And so now here she was, sniffling in front of the mirror, over someone as absolutely horrid as Ron.

She was about to turn away to climb into bed in hopes of getting at least a few hours of fitful sleep before she had to face him tomorrow at breakfast when she noticed a scrap of parchment slipped underneath the dormitory door.

_I'm sorry if you're sorry_, it said in a familiar, sloppy scrawl.

A ghost of a smile managed to appear on her face. Peering into the crack of light between the door and floor, she saw two feet standing directly outside, in plain sight. Ron wouldn't understand the concept of stealth if it jumped onto his dinner plate.

Flipping the bit of parchment over and grabbing a quill from her bedside table, she scribbled her reply, hesitating only for a moment.

_I'm sorry too._

She pushed the piece of paper under the door. A moment later she heard a relieved sigh from the other side of the door and then the sound of feet as they padded across the common room and back to bed.

Hermione smiled.

Perhaps something good had come of tonight after all.


End file.
